Morphing the Narrative

The Far Middle episode 143, released on Valentine’s Day 2024, begins with a darker reflection from the holiday’s history: the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929.  

Nick then begins this installment’s connections, shifting from “illegal gangland Prohibition-era fights, with blood flowing and bullets flying on the streets, to another form of tough competition—the legally sanctioned NBA with blood in the paint.” Nick fast-forwards 73 years later to Allen Iverson’s legendary “practice” interview.  

Nick examines the rest of the story behind Iverson’s interview and explains how it’s “a great example of how media can morph things to fit their desired narrative for whatever reason or for whatever motive.” Incidentally, Allen Iverson joins a select group of repeat Far Middle sports dedication honorees, checkout episode 92 for more.

The theme of morphing the narrative then encompasses the episode’s focus as Nick counters many so-called experts’ claims that inflation has been tamed and run its recent short-lived course. Nick’s analysis is an extension from his recent essay, “20 Reasons Why the Worst is Yet to Come with Inflation.”

Those 20 contributors of inflation—and their many underlying dynamics—can be broadly categorized into government spending and regulation, monetary policy, and geopolitics. A few of the inflationary drivers include: 

• The growth of the regulatory state making everything more expensive.
• The impact of languishing worker productivity continuing to increase the costs of goods and services.
• Higher taxes and fees at every level of government escalating the cost of everything, everywhere, every day.
• Climate policies fueling energy scarcity and raising energy costs, and more.

“Each of these individual factors are their own contributors, but all of them together, that helps drive an incremental step-up of inflation, a cumulative effect that occurs when they all manifest together,” says Nick.

In closing, Nick makes one more connection to February 14, as he remembers Richard Stanley Francis. The British champion jockey and author passed away today, 14 years ago.